Alfredisms

The Polk Progress was a Nebraska treasure that ceased publication in late 1989 after 82 years as a weekly newspaper. From 1955 until its last issue, the editor and publisher was the late Norris Alfred. In its last few months, the Progress had 900 subscribers in 45 states. Alfred was a remarkable Nebraskan with an uncanny eye for connecting the present with the future. Prairie Fire has collaborated with the Alfred family, the University of Nebraska School of Journalism and the Nebraska State Historical Society to locate and archive many of Norris's writings. We are capitalizing on our good fortune to present many of the Norris Alfred writings to our readership. We believe that his observations are as fresh and relevant to today's world as they were when originally written.

“Polking Around”
Aug. 21, 1980

Consumer confidence increased about 10 points, according to a news story. We question its significance. “Confidence in what?” we wondered. Certainly it can’t be in Chrysler Corporation, General Motors or the Ford Company. Everybody knows the dealers in electricity, oil and natural gas are ripping us off. Has anybody bought a pair of shoes lately?

When we auctioned off surplus furnishings of the house that had been the family home for 60 years there was left a sliver of a bar of soap, which we couldn’t decide what to do about. That bar of soap had been kept handy near the kitchen sink for at least 20 years. We had used it many times for a quick wash of hands and, we suspect, others had done likewise. That bar of soap didn’t create suds. It did its work directly, immediately, without sudsy fanfare. Today’s detergents and soaps create mountains of suds which is supposed to be indicative of cleaning power. Well, it isn’t.

We brought that sliver of a bar of soap along when we moved to a smaller house. Using the electric drill we made a hole in it and hung the soap with string on a nail near the kitchen sink. For the next two years, when we wanted to get dishes “sunshine clean,” we lowered that bar of soap into the dish water for two minutes, hung it back on the nail, and the result was sparkling glassware, shining silverware, gleaming pots and pans, and dishes super clean. We had confidence in that bar of soap.

About a year ago, all that was left of the sliver of a bar of soap was the hole. Since then we have experimented with bars of soap, brand after brand, and can’t find one with the lasting and cleaning power of that antique bar. The experience has shaken our consumer confidence. No one surveying consumer confidence has asked us for an opinion. If one of them had, we suspect consumer confidence wouldn’t have shown a 10-point increase.

We have a pair of socks, the last of several pair we confiscated from the Home Service Store stock, when we auctioned off the contents of that business. (The Home Service Store building is now the Polk Library.) That auction happened about 20 years ago and is mentioned here to indicate how long we have had that pair of socks. They won’t wear out. We wear them at least every other week, on the average. We have a couple other pair besides that one. Socks are supposed to wear out. Nobody wants to wear the same pair of socks year after year. That pair of socks has shaken our consumer confidence in planned obsolescence.

The late Philip Meline had a similar experience. He had bought a pair of tires on which he drove and drove and drove. One day he came into the Progress office wearing a worried look and told us about that pair of tires. He said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with them.” He had been to the doctor because the tires were making him nervous. The doctor gave him a prescription for tranquilizers, but the pills didn’t help. He said, “I’ve got over 40,000 miles on that pair of tires and they don’t show any signs of wear.”

We crossed the street with him to Vic Johnson’s café (remember Vic?) and had a cup of coffee and talked over his problem. We thought we had him calmed down, but a week later he traded the car, tires and all, for another car. He told me, “I never said a word to the dealer about those tires. He even gave me an extra good deal because he thought they were new tires.”

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